State releases new unemployment numbers — KUNM News
New Mexico’s unemployment numbers increased over the last month, jumping from 4.1 in August to 4.2% in September, and from 3.9% the previous year.
The Department of Workforce Solutions released the new numbers yesterday.
The total labor force is more than 977 million workers strong, with almost 50,000 workers unemployed, according to the update.
Total nonagricultural employment grew by almost 14,000 jobs, with more than 10,000 of those jobs being added in the private sector.
Mining and construction employment saw a slight uptick and manufacturing. Private education and health services also gained jobs.
Public sector jobs increased by a little more than 3,000 jobs during the same period. Just over half of those were in state government.
Further analysis on the jobs report will be released with the Labor Market Review to be released October 29.
Poll: Heinrich keeps large lead in Senate race - Matthew Reichbach, New Mexico Political Report
A new poll found that U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich maintained his double-digit lead as he seeks a third term in the U.S. Senate.
Heinrich, the Democratic incumbent, faces Republican nominee and former hedge fund executive Nella Domenici in the general election. A poll conducted by Research and Polling, Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal showed Heinrich leads in the race 51 percent to 40 percent among likely voters.
This is very similar to the result from the same pollster in September, when they found a 12-point lead for Heinrich.
The poll found that Heinrich leads among both men and women. Among women, Heinrich leads 54 percent to 37 percent. Heinrich has a smaller lead among men, 49 percent to 43 percent.
Heinrich was previously a member of the U.S. House and the Albuquerque City Council. Domenici is the daughter of Pete Domenici, the longest-serving U.S. Senator in New Mexico history.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 10 and Oct. 18, and the poll used live interviewers based in Albuquerque and included live interviews of cell phones and landlines. The poll surveyed 1,024 likely voters and it has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
New NM polls show Dems outpacing GOP candidates for US House, Senate and President - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
New polling from the Albuquerque Journal has Democratic candidates ahead in every federal election in New Mexico, which include the U.S. House, Senate and the Presidency.
Vice President Kamala Harris has a 9-point lead over former President Donald Trump in the latest poll, conducted for the Journal by Research & Polling Inc. That’s held pretty steady from last month, but the number of undecided voters dropped by more than half. It’s now at just 4%. Another 3% of voters told the pollsters that they’re backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is no longer running but does appear on the state’s ballot.
Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich has maintained a double-digit lead over Republican challenger Nella Domenici in that race’s poll. Of likely voters polled, 51% said they’re backing the two-term Senator over 40% who support the daughter of former Sen. Pete Domenici. Still, the race is closer than Heinrich’s 2018 reelection bid.
For the U.S. House, the Democratic candidates are up in the polls for all three contests. The tightest by far is in southern New Mexico’s 2nd District, where Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez has only a 4% lead over former Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell. That’s within the poll’s margin of error. Vasquez eked out a win over Herrell two years ago by just 1,300 votes. Polls of the other two congressional races have the Democratic incumbents up by 17 points.
Council approves proposal to create citywide AI policy - Elizabeth McCall, City Desk ABQ
The City of Albuquerque is one step closer to having an artificial intelligence policy after city councilors approved a proposal to convene a group of experts from city departments to develop an AI policy.
The proposal — sponsored by Councilors Tammy Fiebelkorn and Dan Champine — passed by a 7-2 vote.
“I’m not an artificial intelligence expert, but I do know that there are some really good uses of AI that can come about,” Fiebelkorn said. “I’m not saying that AI is bad, I’m saying that there are really bad uses of AI that we want to make sure we protect our citizens against. We also want to think through those good uses and see where they are useful to the city.”
The AI policy working group would include staff from multiple city departments and stakeholders from community entities. The legislation also appropriates funding to “support the development and implementation of the policy and identification of best practices with all AI uses.”
During the council’s Oct. 7 meeting, Councilor Brook Bassan was the only member who voted against raising the funding for the bill from $40,000 to $50,000. On Monday, before voting against the entire proposal, Bassan again raised her funding objections.
“I really have a hard time with too many cooks in the kitchen category on this,” Bassan said Monday. “I just really have a hard time wanting to even pay $50,000 to come up with something that 31 people are eventually going to agree on because you can’t get nine of us to agree on something very often. I’m not able to support this.”
Fiebelkorn said she thinks it is important that city employees and community members have a say in developing an AI policy that will be in place for a “very long time.”
“We’re at a precipice of a really big change in technology, and it behooves us to make sure that we have a plan in place to really put guardrails up for the proper use of AI,” Fiebelkorn said. “While $50,000 is a lot of money…it’s not a lot of money when you think about the potential downfalls of unfettered AI use.”
Read more about the proposal here.
Councilors uphold mayor’s veto on resolution that would limit his influence on charter changes - By Elizabeth McCall, City Desk ABQ
On Monday several Albuquerque city councilors changed their vote on a resolution the panel approved two weeks ago — which would have given the council more power to influence charter changes — after Mayor Tim Keller vetoed the bill.
The Charter Review Task Force convenes nearly every 10 years to evaluate the city’s charter and identify any needed changes.
Under the current city code, Keller is allowed to choose the task force’s seven members with input from the council. Councilor Dan Champine, however, proposed that the mayor pick one member of an 11-person task force. During the council’s Oct. 7 meeting, councilors approved Champine’s proposal on a 7-2 vote.
Keller vetoed the resolution on Oct. 18 with a message that noted in previous years, the mayor picked more than one task force member. Keller said he is open to revisiting the resolution with councilors and finding a more equal solution.
Keller wrote that he vetoed the proposal “because it doesn’t maintain an appropriate balance between the geographic representation or legislative and executive branch obligations outlined under the current City Charter.”
Champine moved to override Keller’s veto Monday but that motion failed to get the six votes it needed to pass.
“I felt it was a well-rounded approach,” Champine said.
Champine’s proposal would have increased the number of members on the task force and allowed each councilor to pick one. The mayor would appoint one member, then the council as a whole would choose an 11th to serve as the chair.
“I really want to remind people that we did vote on this 7-2,” Champine said. “It does show a good representation of each district of the city and the city as a whole. It isn’t us versus them, it’s one government moving forward.”
Council President Dan Lewis said if the council is open to making some changes and introducing another resolution, he is “certainly willing to do that.” Councilor Nichole Rogers, who tried to pass a similar bill in June, agreed with Lewis.
Read more about the resolution here.
Sexual assault helpline launches during Domestic Violence Awareness Month - By Sunsan Dunlap, New Mexico Political Report
A new, dedicated statewide sexual assault helpline officially went live on Monday.
The New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs launched the helpline to provide a place for individuals who have experienced sexual assault to talk. According to the coalition, 76.1 percent of individuals living in New Mexico affected by sexual assault are not receiving help.
Rachel Cox, deputy director of NMCSAP, said the first thing a caller will hear from the person on the other line is that they are there to listen.
Cox said that the loss of power and control over a survivor’s own body is the critical part of the trauma and that the path to healing is about providing choice in how they heal.
“When you call the helpline, you can even choose what music you listen to,” she said.
Alexandria Taylor, executive director of NMCSAP, told NM Political Report that there is a need for a stand-alone, statewide sexual assault helpline because so much of what underlies other problems, such as mental health concerns or substance abuse disorders, is that the individuals have a sexual assault trauma history but when they call other helplines, the caller doesn’t lead with the sexual assault story.
Cox estimates that 1.1 million individuals in New Mexico have experienced sexual assault. She acknowledged that, in a state of about 2 million, that is a shockingly high number but she said it feels shocking if one defines sexual assault as a “violent rape in an alleyway.” Cox said sexual assault can be anything a person experiences that they “said no to but it happened anyway.”
“Most have had an experience they’re uncomfortable with but had to tolerate. They didn’t want it to have happen,” Cox said when she defined sexual assault.
Taylor said having a 24/7 helpline dedicated for callers to talk anonymously about sexual assault is important because “for someone to get to the point to say they were sexually harmed, it is one of the most soul-wrenching, hardest things someone choses to share with another person.”
In a state with a significant shortage of behavioral health providers, Cox called the new helpline a “mental health release valve.” She said 70 to 80 percent of clients who visit community health centers have a history of sexual assault. She said that if the root cause of a person’s mental health issue is not addressed due to case worker overload, the person could still be spinning in anxiety, have relationship problems, work problems and it can have an intergenerational impact.
Cox said a study that looked at people utilizing the emergency room services chronically in Taos found that all of those patients had a history of sexual assault.
“It’s an issue behind so many of our overburdened systems,” Cox said.
RURAL NEW MEXICO
Despite a decrease in federal Victims of Crime Act funding, due to a decrease in fines and fees collected from white collar crimes, state funding has increased over the last few years, Taylor said. That has both helped to fill the gap left by the loss of VOCA funding and enabled the coalition to expand services so that, instead of 13 sexual assault providers, there are now 16 across the state.
Taylor said the new ones added are in Grants, Alamogordo and Carlsbad. She said the coalition is working with a provider in Española who is adding a sexual assault program to their existing structure, which will increase the number of sexual assault providers to 17 when complete. She said there were 10 sexual assault nurse examiners, who are specially trained to both provide clinical support to rape victims but also to collect evidence and testify in court when necessary. Now there are 13 with another about to start soon, Taylor said.
Cox said it’s “important for us to build a state-wide infrastructure to have access for anyone.” She said that in urban communities, a sexual assault survivor might seek help through a private practice provider but in many rural communities, a sexual assault provider is often the only helping service agency available.
“And we understand that isolation is a tool to perpetuate sexual violence against folks,” Cox said.
She said that 30 percent of the population lives in rural parts of the state but rural individuals make up 41 percent of the state’s sexual assault provider’s clients. Cox said the reason for that disproportionality could be because of the dearth of private practice providers in rural areas, which means the network of sexual assault providers, along with now the new helpline, are all rural individuals have to rely on for support.
Taylor said the state legislature allocated $500,000 in nonrecurring funding for the creation of the helpline over the past two years. She said U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, has allocated $1.6 million of congressionally directed spending to go to the coalition to also support the helpline but that money has yet to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
Taylor said the coalition will be asking for $1 million in recurring funding from the state in 2025 for the on-going operation of the helpline.
Taylor said that even with 16 sexual assault providers across the state, “that doesn’t reflect every New Mexico community.”
“If you don’t see a service provider in your community, you don’t know where to call,” Taylor said.
With the creation of the helpline, callers who can’t find any services in their communities will now have a place to call. Individuals can also chat or text if they prefer that method of communication. Callers can be connected to services if they want it through the helpline through either a three-way call or given the phone number if the caller wants to make those phone calls later. Or, they can just talk.
Cox said that if someone just wants to say the word, “sexual assault” and hang up, the caller is the one in control of the call and the level of support they receive.
WHO WILL TAKE THE CALLS?
Cox said the individuals who will be receiving the calls receive 120 hours of training. She said all of the responders on the helpline have a professional background of working with people impacted by trauma. She said that the responders will also receive ongoing supervision in their role and are trained to understand that the isolation and dehumanization that individuals feel because of sexual assault is “best met with connection and dignity.” Cox said that everyone receiving calls on the helpline were either born in New Mexico or have lived in the state for decades and are “deeply connected to what works in New Mexico.”
The rates of sexual assault among Native women are particularly high across the nation. With 23 federally recognized tribes and pueblos in New Mexico, the helpline’s language access is, currently, a work in progress and the helpline will rely on interpretation services to help bridge language barriers.
“We offer humility,” Taylor said, acknowledging that the helpline is still an evolving process and that is an area where it may struggle to meet the need.
She said the coalition will strive for more universal language access. She said the coalition also wants the helpline to be accountable and if anyone who calls in feels they were harmed, even if unintentionally, the coalition wants to hear about it. She said, should that happen, a caller should reach out to the NMCSAP’s office directly.
Taylor said one way the helpline was designed to build trust for individuals who might feel distrust, is that no one on the helpline will ask self-identifying questions of the callers.
Cox said in tribal communities, sexual assault survivors often have to make decisions about sharing information within their communities that is not confidential or safe or they have to reach out to more mainstream systems of care that might lack cultural competency. Cox said that the coalition hopes the helpline will provide a way for Indigenous individuals a place to go who feel “stuck in the gaps in the system.”
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH
Taylor pointed out that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
She said domestic violence and sexual assault are two issues that have been “siloed” but the majority of people who experience sexual violence report that the perpetrator is a current or former intimate partner or an acquaintance. Taylor said that sexual violence that occurs in a relationship is “extremely dangerous.”
“It’s one of the indicators of the lethality of the situation,” she said.
Taylor said that it’s harder to quantify the rates of sexual assault during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, but rates of domestic violence increased.
“I can almost guarantee that sexual violence increased in those homes as well. It’s connected but we have a hard time acknowledging sexual violence exists in intimate partner relationships because of societal norms, culture and religions,” she said.
The idea for the helpline was born out of the first few weeks in the pandemic, Taylor said, when, for several weeks, everything except essential services shut down.
“We knew people were experiencing isolation and fear and whether they were recently harmed or have a previous history, those factors bring all that up for people,” she said.
*The New Mexico Sexual Assault Helpline is accessible 24/7 by phone, text, and online chat. Survivors can call or text 1-844-667-2457 or access the Helpline and online chat functions at nmsahelp.org.